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Clinic Run By Bachmann’s Husband Draws Criticism

Rep. Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign draws criticisms that her husband's clinic promotes therapy that turns gays straight through prayer.

Fresh off of a controversy surrounding her signing a marriage pledge that initially said African-American families fared better during slavery than they currently are under President Obama’s administration, the last thing Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign needs is another controversy. But, as the Associated Press reports, Bachmann and Associates Inc., a Christian counseling clinic run by her husband, is getting unwanted attention over its alleged practice of trying to convert gays to straights through prayer.

 

An undercover video that aired Monday on the ABC News program Nightline shows a therapist telling a client that therapy could help him desire women.

 

“I believe twice over the course of the first session he made reference to his belief that we are all created heterosexual and that some of us just have different challenges with that,” John Becker told AP. “God created us all for heterosexuality—he said that twice.”

 

Andrew Ramirez, whose parents sent him to the clinic for treatment when he was 17 after he told them he was gay, told AP that he was advised “to pray to God that I no longer be gay, and study the bible and that through continued therapy God could perform a miracle and I could become straight.”

 

Ramirez attended only two sessions and Marcus Bachmann has denied that his clinic seeks to cure people of being gay. When an ABC News reporter tried to get comment on the matter from the congresswoman on Tuesday, she refused to address it.

 

“I’m focusing on turning the economy around and on jobs so that’s what I’m focusing on,” she said.

(Photo: Steve Pope/Getty Images)

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